Earlier this month (1/5), when President Obama announced new measures intended to curb gun violence[1], the press fixated on the tears he shed while discussing some of worst massacres of recent years. Washington Post writer Chris Cillizza devoted an online column to explaining why Obama’s tears were “a good thing.”[2] His Post colleagues, reporters Juliet Eilperin and David Nakamura, noted the display was especially remarkable for a president “whose reputation for stoicism and aloofness is well-earned.”[3]

The Internet likewise bubbled with comments about the president’s display of emotion. Not surprisingly, his supporters lauded him for the show of humanity, while his detractors charged that he was shedding “crocodile tears.”

It’s puzzling why the tears drew such media attention. A political leader who isn’t moved by heinous slaughter would be much more newsworthy than one who is.

That said, people who truly want to reduce heinous crime would have preferred a stoic and aloof Obama who offered some reason—any reason—to believe his new initiatives and other proposals would reduce the rates of murder and other violent death. Yet in his remarks, the president offered none.

And it’s unclear what reasons he could have given. As fellow Herald-Mail columnist Lloyd Waters[4] and several other commentators have pointed out, none of Obama’s new initiatives would have obstructed any of the mass shootings he tearfully cited. More broadly, as I explained in an essay for Reason.com last October[5], there’s little (if any) empirical evidence that any commonly recommended gun control initiative—handgun registration, repealing open- or concealed-carry permits, extended gun-purchase wait times, etc.—would have any beneficial effect on U.S. violent crime rates. In a nation where an estimated 300 million guns are already in private hands, and a large and proficient black market can smuggle hundreds of millions more across the borders as easily as cocaine and heroin, it’s unclear why the president would think that some minor gun purchase provisions would prevent major violent crimes.

So, instead of offering reasons to think his new policies might make Americans safer, President Obama resorted to hopeful mantras. “The constant excuses for inaction no longer do, no longer suffice,” he explained, unintentionally calling to mind the daft syllogism from the British political comedy Yes, Prime Minister: “We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.”

If the new executive orders could just “stop one act of evil, one act of violence,” they’d be justified, President Obama said, parroting the “If this could save just one life…” logic of an eighth grade debating team. Or the logic of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, who has suggested closing U.S. mosques and massacring terrorists’ families.

In fairness to President Obama, simple reasoning, empirical data and careful analysis—science, in his vocabulary—cannot dictate public policy. Science is not normative; it merely attempts to describe the material state of the world. Public policy, on the other hand, is driven by value choices about how—and whether—to try to change that state. To use a different issue as an example: science strongly indicates that carbon emissions can affect the earth’s climate, but that observation doesn’t justify government action to slow carbon emissions. Rather, policymakers must make a value choice of whether to try to reduce climate change, and at what cost. Likewise, science indicates that gun control has little effect on violent crime, but politicians can still adopt gun control measures, perhaps for symbolic reasons or political gain.

By embracing gun control that even he apparently realizes will have little effect on violent crime, President Obama satisfies the emotional need to do something. The alleged stoic is a sentimentalist at heart. But that raises the question: when the next heinous gun crime occurs—and we all know it’s coming, and far too soon—what will a re-impassioned Obama do next?

If he were a liberal, he would quickly repeal the new executive orders; after all, liberal values do not tolerate restrictions on liberty that have no public benefit. But that’s not how the politics of emotion work; Obama’s doubling down on government intervention is far more likely.

So, after the next heart-wringing massacre, what else will the president try in order to “stop one act of evil”? And when those government controls fail, what will he try next? Where will the president’s tears ultimately lead?